As someone who has actually never paid for a Windows key even though I started with Win 98, and I before this Win 10 installation have never genuinely activated any them, I quite easily understand why they don’t do it that way any more. I also do remember back when Windows 7 was going through this exact same thing how trivially easy it was to get those updates without paying - so easy in fact that most people assumed MS did it on purpose just so that people would rather pirate them than run an unpatched installation for three years.